Thornwyn Mossbrook's Arc

Chapter 36 of 38

Two days passed in the matron's back room. The elf slept most of it. The girl ate bread and slept curled against the deer. Thornwyn changed bandages and watched the window. On the third morning the matron set a bowl of porridge in front of her and said, "Market opens at the bell. You promised them the child fed. You did not promise them empty hands, but they will notice empty hands." Thornwyn stopped chewing. She had nothing to trade. Her cottage was ash. Her stores were ash. She had a staff, a knife, a burned coat, and a child who needed to be seen well. Every stall on market day put something on the boards. Bread. Wool. Turnips. She would arrive with a girl and a limp and confirm every word already spoken about her. She went out to the yard. The piebald deer stood in the thin sun, its long tail flicking at flies. The patchwork coat had lost blood-crust to the matron's rag work. It watched her the way it had watched her at the cottage door, before any of this. She knelt in the dirt and pressed her palm to the frost-hard ground. She spoke three words into the earth. Then three more. She had done this for her own stew pot, small work, mushrooms and rose hips from the near woods. She pulled harder now. She pulled from the field, from the tree line, from the beds under the snow that had not yet come. Winter apples came first, rolling out of nothing onto the packed dirt. Then walnuts in their green husks. Then a knot of late mushrooms, wet and clean. Then bundles of yarrow and mint, tied as if a careful hand had cut them. She kept pulling until her arms shook and the deer stepped closer and pressed its shoulder to hers to hold her upright. The matron came out and looked at the pile. She did not speak for a moment. Then she fetched two baskets. Thornwyn walked to the market with the girl at her hip and the deer at her other side. She set the baskets on an open board between the wool woman and the bread man. The girl stood where people could see her cheeks were fuller than a week ago. The deer lay down at Thornwyn's feet and watched the crowd. People came. They took an apple and left a copper. They took mushrooms and left a strip of dried meat. The woman in the apron from the field took a bundle of yarrow, looked at the girl, and put down a wedge of hard cheese without a word. By the third bell the baskets were half empty and Thornwyn's apron pocket was heavy. She had paid the debt she owed the village. She had not paid the one she owed the coming winter, and the elf had not yet opened his eyes.